outbreak of the Second World War, the British carried out more than a hundred military operations against the Pushtun tribes on both sides of what is now the Afghan-Pakistani border. In November of 1878, Anglo- Russian rivalry led to another British invasion and another disastrous defeat. In Victorian England, meanwhile, Afghanistan had come to symbolize the risks and hardshi ps of carrying the white man's burden. Winston Churchill, who participated in an 1897 "frontier war" as a "subaltern of horse," defended the British massacres and village burnings against the Glad- stone liberals, who "seemed to imagine that the tribesmen consisted of a regu- lar army who fought, and a peaceful, law-abiding population who remained at their business." The reality, he wrote, was that "every inhabitant is a soldier from the first day he is old enough to hurl a stone, till the last day he has strength to pull a trigger." Finally, the British concluded that the Afghans did not make good clients- that, given their history of isolation and their insurrectionary culture, it was better to subsidize the tribal chiefs than to attempt to pacify them. For centuries) the people of Afghan- istan have scratched out a livelihood by travel, trade, and combat. As late as 1929, only two or three per cent of the land in Afghanistan was under cultivation; since the nineteen-sixties, various development projects have in- creased the figure to about fifteen per cent. But, having only ten inches of rainfall a year and four uncoöperative river systems, Afghanistan offers few opportunities for farming. Two cen- turies before Christ, the Great Silk Road-the network of caravan trails through the difficult terrain and haz- ardous weather of Afghanistan-linked the civilizations of China and India to those of Egypt, Greece, and Italy. (Around 1940, French excavators dis- covered in two subterranean rooms, presumably storerooms, rare Buddhist art, vases, and lacquerware from Chi- na's Han Dynasty, carved ivories of an- cient India, Phoenician glassware, and a vase bearing a scene from the Iliad.) Nomads, who until 1978 were still a sixth of Afghanistan's population, had the knowledge and the skills to guide the caravans along the trails. Warrior bands protected the travellers and their merchandise-for a price-or, failing to find protégés or looking for better returns, raided them. Tribes that con- trolled sections of the route and the mountain passes collected levies both from private traders and from govern- ments. Merchants in the cities pro- vided food, water, and pack animals. Only in the small urban centers, at the junctions of trails or close to border areas-Kandahar, Herat, Ghazni, Mazar-i-Sharif, Peshawar-did the government exercise authority. Else- where along this most enduring trade route in human history, the warriors' code prevailed. For the nomadic war- riors, the most feared enemy was a central government seeking dominion over them. By the middle of the second millen- nium, this commercial network, under the control of Muslim rulers and mer- chants, had expanded greatly. Then the rise of Western capitalism and the opening of maritime routes to the East destroyed the ancient trading network. The Dutch, French, and British East India Companies began to control the flow of trade between East and West. The Afghans were put out of business. But they were spared colonial occupation, and they remained largely outside the international capi- talist economy. Only after the Second W orld War did Afghanistan begin a process of economic modernization, with Soviet and American aid. The Soviet invasion, despite the de- struction it has caused, has revived the trading life of Afghanistan, for it has produced a thriving commerce in con- sumer goods and contraband, mostly through Pakistan. Early last year, the state bank of Pakistan estimated that goods worth eighty-two billion rupees, or four billion six hundred and seventy million dollars, were being smuggled in and out of Pakistan each year. That is an eighth of Pakistan's gross national product. Narcotics are the major commodity of this underground economy, followed by arms. The center of the commercial activity is Peshawar. There Afghan peddlers 51 sell Russian caviar, and in the markets are to be found canned fish, cheeses, jams, and jellies from the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. The war has brought French, Norwegians, Americans, Englishmen, and Saudis to Peshawar, and they eagerly shop for East German cameras and binocu- lars, Russian scarves and woollen sweaters, Swiss watches, and Japanese calculators. A Pakistani customs offi- cial eXplained to us that West Eu- ropean and Japanese imports bound for Afghanistan from Karachi were trucked to the Khyber Pass, where the goods were inspected before crossing into Afghanistan. "But these days many trucks unload soon after the bor- der crossing, and their cargoes are smuggled back into Pakistan," he said. "We can't control the border. There is so much traffic. It is nothing here in Peshawar. Go to Bara or Landi Kotal if you want to see." Bara, a dusty patch of land divided by a broken, narrow road, is about fifteen miles north of Peshawar. Goods are sold in hundreds of shops made of corrugated metal and protected from the summer sun by cloth hangings. The traffic resembled that of any rural market in a small frontier town- carts, donkeys, goats, a couple of scrawny cows mingled with armed men in baggy clothes and turbans- except that there were T oyotas and Suzukis parked in clusters in front of the stalls. Middle-class families come here bargain hunting from as far away as Lahore, three hundred miles to the southeast. Smuggled goods are cheap in Bara, but prices mount as one moves farther from the Afghan bor- der. The black markets in the tribal areas along the border, where the Af- ghan refugees are concentrated, have become popular shopping centers for northern Pakistan. An astonishing va- riety of merchandise is on sale. There are clothes, cosmetics, and weapons, but the best-sellers are the household appliances: Russian irons, air-con- ditioners, toasters, gas stoves; East German refrigerators, television sets, stereos. Young employees carry large boxes to the cars, and the customers scramble to make room. Pakistan has replaced Lebanon as the world's largest open market in arms. A London television group was reported to have found a Blowpipe missile in the market at Bara-a Brit- ish-made missile that the C.I.A. sup- plies to the Mujahideen. Most of the weapons available in Bara are less ad- vanced. We saw British Lee-Enfield